As a child, Libby Cotner would look up in the sky and watch planes fly in to Dallas Love Field near her home.

That’s when she decided she wanted to fly. But when she graduated from high school in 1976, there were few options for a woman to become a pilot. Instead, Cotner joined the Dallas Police Department in 1978 as a patrol officer.

She finally realized her lifelong dream in 1994 when she became the department’s first woman helicopter pilot. Now, two decades later, Cotner has announced plans to retire after 36 years as a Dallas police officer.

As the only female helicopter pilot in the history of the agency, she’ll be leaving the department just like she found it — without a female pilot.

“It’s a hole that’s not going to be filled. You can’t replace Libby,” said Sgt. Todd Limerick, a night supervisor of the helicopter unit. “Our unit mother is gone.”

There were few female patrol officers when Cotner joined the force at age 19, the beneficiary of a brief rule change that allowed people under 21 to become officers. Cotner relied heavily on the few women who were there for support.

“When you first start out, all the female officers, I considered mentors,” Cotner said. “I looked up and talked to them and asked them questions.”

But she said it took awhile for some of her male co-workers to warm up to her.

“It was a challenge at times. And I can remember some guys making comments and stuff,” said Cotner, a senior corporal. She would tell them, “I’m here to work and be your friend and be your partner.”

Cotner was a pioneer in the department, said Officer Rick Janich, who oversees the Police Department’s historical collection.

“With Libby coming in ’78, that was really the infancy of females going out on the street,” Janich said. But becoming the first woman helicopter pilot “takes it to another level of being a trailblazer.”

Cotner says she didn’t have the strength of some of her male counterparts, so she would use other tactics when making arrests.

“I would try to talk them into jail instead of having to deal with it in brute force,” she said.

She recalled a time when she and another female officer arrested an unruly man who appeared to be drunk. They were able to calm him down and take him to jail, but he told them he would have to act differently once he got there.

“He goes, ‘I’m gonna have to talk bad to you guys when we get to jail. I can’t let them see these two women brought me in,’” she said. “He mouthed and mouthed and mouthed the entire time.”

After seven years in patrol, Cotner moved into the traffic division, where she worked as an investigator for two years before being promoted to detective.

But after seven years as a detective, Cotner couldn’t keep the desire to fly at bay. She was already a senior corporal, one of the requirements to join the department’s helicopter unit. But she would have to spend thousands of dollars of her own money to earn her pilot’s license.

It was a drastic change for her and her husband. They had three young children. Cotner was scheduled to work overnight as a pilot while her husband, Jeff Cotner, also worked as a Dallas police officer during the day. They had to balance opposite schedules with family life.

“Just make the best of the days off,” said Jeff Cotner, now a Dallas police major over the crimes against persons unit. “You work your life around those little moments in time.”

As a police helicopter pilot — one of 12 in the unit — Cotner helped patrol officers search for suspects or missing persons.

“She still had that street smarts about her,” Limerick said. “She was able to work the call from the air like somebody on the ground,” he said.

Cotner says being a woman gave her an added advantage.

“We’re intuitive. We feel things that are happening or are going on,” she said. “That’s where I think women can excel on the job.”

Even with a taxing work schedule, Cotner still managed to spend much of her spare time volunteering with the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts of America for her children.

“I believe others can look up to Libby, whether it be scouting, or marriage or a mother or a professional perspective, you know, you can do it,” Jeff Cotner said. “It can be done.”

She still volunteers with the Girl Scouts, and when she talks to the youngsters in the troops, she tells them to pursue their dreams no matter the obstacles.

“A lot of the trails have already been blazed for you, but there’s always going to be some gender issues,” Cotner said.

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